TPI Results

Did the results of your TPI fit your image of yourself as a teacher? Do you think the TPI results are different for the same person teaching online and face-to-face?

I found my TPI results interesting. I scored between 31 and 39 in all areas with Apprenticeship (39) and Developmental (37) being the highest and Social Reform (31) and Transmission (33) the lowest. Even though this meant I had one dominant (Apprenticeship) an one recessive (Social Reform) but nothing veered to the extreme high or low in one direction or another.

I am not sure what I think of the results and if it fit my image of myself as a teacher. Years of one-on-one music lesson teaching has always been a side job for me, no matter what else I was teaching (including every elementary grade from Preschool through fifth grade, instrumental music grades 4-12, high school ESL, high school and adult music theory, high school music appreciation, sixth grade Information Literacy, or Library K-6 at some point or another) and that requires teaching of practical skills and preparing students for public performance using those skills so I see a correlation to the dominance in apprenticeship. In my early teaching training I was mentored in a developmental approach and it has deeply impacted my thinking so that score showing up a bit higher also seems to make sense.

My only real internal discrepancies (disagreement between belief, intention, and action) occurred in social reform and transmission. I think I felt the most cautious and conflicted when I answered those questions in the inventory. Regarding social reform, I do feel a caution in using the classroom as a platform for lobbying for some political or social ideology because there is so much room for well-intentioned and misguided energy. There is a degree of subjectivity, and slant even in news reporting. I do agree we need to teach students to think, but to also do their homework and research the facts from all angles. I personally am cautious about jumping on any political or social reform bandwagon. Part of that is because I am old enough to have seen some social movements turn out to be based on incorrect or incomplete information. That no doubt influences my teaching. About transmission also, I felt a little conflicted answering those questions as well, because though I have had many times in my life where I have taught subjects I had a high degree of expertise in, I have also found myself in positions of teaching subjects I was not expert in simply because it was a need (ie. the year I started 8 beginner violinists when I had not spent any time learning the violin myself and had to stay a few lessons ahead of my students all along the way, or becoming an ESL tutor because I had had the experience of living in a foreign culture and trying to learn another language and could identify even though I had no coursework in ESL).

I really would be inclined to think the TPI results for a teacher online and in a traditional classroom would be the same. I think your core image of what is important to good teaching will be transmitted in all your teaching regardless of the environment.

Blog Post for Week 3

How has your thinking about online schools and online schooling changed since the first week?

I am pleasantly surprised to find that the concept of virtual schooling, specifically how to manage virtual schools and what they should be expected to accomplish is getting a fair amount of intelligent consideration. Some of the concerns I had that first week -- that I know to be concerns of others -- are things that are being accounted for in at least some sectors of the virtual school community. One of these is the question of academic integrity. It gives me more confidence to know that there are virtual schools that require some phone contact, and face-to-face contact, through webcam, and/or through random or regular proctored testing. I am glad to read too, that learning styles and effective strategies are being incorporated and there are more options on the K-12 level than just courses where students are reading pages and pages of text and left on their own to understand what they are required to learn with little to no help from an on-line instructor. I appreciate that there are those who are thinking through the process of authorizing virtual schools, and not blindly making decisions apart from the realities of how students learn and what is needed by LEAs and SEAs to be more effective in reaching students who are in need of credit recovery or a school day that doesn't require them to sit in a brick and mortar classroom from 8-3 pm five days a week. I was pleasantly surprised that the needs of students with disabilities are being discussed, and how to make online schooling a viable option for those Special Education students that might want it. I am also pleasantly surprised to consider that the online schooling option allows that a teacher may be able to give more one-to-one attention than in a traditional classroom. From before week 1 I was sold on virtual schooling as having tremendous potential, and the more I learn, the more convinced, yea, enthusiastic I become about it.

Tweet - from a High School student perspective

I want courses on interesting subjects, w/great graphics, easy-to-access-tech support & extra help. Want to learn alot & have fun doing it!

Week 1 Reflection

Ugh! Somehow in my attention to everything else I missed the rather important detail that we were responsible to post a reflection on week 1. I think that may be my one frustration with this -- my inbox gets inundated with various threads of conversation and the subsequent comments for each. In paying attention to so many details I have found that it is all too easy to miss something important, as I managed to do this week. Without the use of much audio as in a traditional classroom, one must rely on their eyes almost entirely to pick up everything necessary to be successful in the course. I imagine that auditory learners might find this format more frustrating than visual learners. In Michelle Davis' article from Education Week I appreciated the list of Dos and Don'ts and can see the importance of using multiple points of entry for materials -- text, video, and audio as well as wikis, blogs, message boards and chat rooms and not sticking to large amounts of text for students to read on their own.

I am actually enjoying the readings immensely. Since I decided to create an online course for my graduate project, I am taking notes with two purposes in mind -- completing assignments and doing research for my project. In response to question #1 - The thing I found most surprising: I had no idea there were so many online school programs out there, and that they have been around for so long (since 1997 for the Florida Virtual School). I find it encouraging that there is a wealth of information and sources for best practices.

It has been interesting to read the blogs created by my classmates and to glean ideas and information from the experience of others. There is so much to be gained from the experience others have had in their use of online courses in the schools where they work. I look forward to tapping this gold mine!

And question #2 -The biggest question I am left with by the end of week 1: with so many options of ways to do online courses, how does one decide what is the most effective format and tools to teach their subject matter to the targeted group of students who will be taking the course? More personally, how am I going to narrow things down to come up with the best format for the course I am seeking to create?

Assignment 1 - Introduction

Hi. I'm Tricia Gleason, an MA Candidate in the Intensive Technology and Education program. My educational background is on the bottom right of the blog page if you are interested to see it. After more than 20 years of working in the fields of music and elementary education, as both an instrumental music teacher (band and strings) and an elementary classroom teacher (PS-6) I came to TC in 2007 to begin the program in CCTE to learn to better integrate technology into my classroom teaching and curriculum development. In the past few years, this has led in a sort of round about way, to work in Library Media, and I currently am the library media specialist at Smithtown Christian School on Long Island, and because of my coursework at TC found myself becoming the unofficial webmaster for my school websites, which are being upgraded. In addition to the website work, my library duties, (and private music lessons, which I teach on the side) I also manage the staff e-mail accounts and work with several others in administrating the facebook and twitter accounts for our school.

• What made [me] interested in this course?

After four years in the program, I am finally nearing the finish line, as this is my last course. My graduate project is to create an online course for high school students that would provide them with experience using options that go beyond their default of using a regular search engine for doing research. Because of that, I am curious as to what is going on the field of online learning for K-12 students, and so this course very much caught my eye. I am looking forward to what we will learn.

• What experience do [I] have with online learning (if any)? Was it positive or negative and why? I have taken two online courses at TC and a few work-related webinars online. My own experience has been mostly positive but a bit mixed. I didn't enjoy my first online graduate course too well; it was a course on GoGoEd.com that was asynchronous and text-based only, consisting entirely of articles and notes that my classmates and I had to read and study at our own pace, which meant we could all be working on different lessons at the same time, and our evaluation was a series of multiple choice quizzes based on the readings. Even though there was a discussion board, and the interaction was often stimulating and allowed for thoughtful response, I found the time-factor frustrating. It took a long time to type a response that could be spoken in a short amount of time. With discussion taking place over the course of a week or a period of weeks, the time lag made it akin to having a discussion where others enter a room at different times and say their piece and then leave and miss the rest of the discussion. The last one to post on the discussion forum got to say his/her piece to an "empty room".

The second on-line course I took was outstanding. We had the option of taking the course synchronously or asynchronously, as there was a regularly scheduled class meeting time. My classmates and I connected remotely from all over the world using Adobe Connect, and saw our instructor and his powerpoint presenting live via webcam. We had the option of using our own webcams too, but generally didn't use them, but we had live audio and could either speak or chime in via chat to ask questions or add to the discussion. There was a feature that allowed for private discussion while the instruction was going on, so those of us who needed technical assistance to fix an audio problem could privately ask the TA for help without interrupting the instructor. There was a way for the instructor to post short polls or surveys and tabulate responses during class time, and even option for breaking the class up into small groups for discussion during class time. If a student couldn't login at the time of the session, the sessions were recorded and we were provided with links that allowed us to view the entire presentation at a later date, including all the chat and discussion that went on during the session. It also meant that even if we attended the session we had the link to listen to the entire presentation again to review or reinforce learning. That particular online learning experience allowed me to see great potentiality for online courses as vehicles to keep students engaged and facilitate depth of learning.